IASA Cranes
IASA Cranes Firm is long since merged with LUNA Cranes also from Spain. The Company History In March of 1957, Pablo and Pedro Albajar, two enthusiastic brothers from Huesca opened & owned a large factory intended for agricultural business and for manufacturing farm implements so IASA was born to make all kinds of heavy machinery and at one point was one of the few employing largest firms working in Spain. As the company specialized into mechanical equipment and the brothers had mechanical studies they designed their own machines and production soon started at Huesca. However during the world recession of the 1990s IASA unfortunately experienced some problems and were forced to merge with close neighbour LUNA, a long established crane specialist and manufacturer who is also based at Huesca and because of several difficulties and low sales IASA were forced to close in 1996 but were soon acquired entirely by LUNA who kept some of the IASA original machinery production and the company active for a while longer until the end of the 1990s. IASA Development and Production As already mentioned IASA were originaly founded to produce farm implements and other similar equipment, mainly combine harvesters, agricultural spreaders, cherrypickers and farmtrailers. Around January of 1958, IASA company received an order from the Spanish State & Government to make and supply 20000 models of new diesel powered Combine Harvesters units under a contract deal so that Spain would count on IASA for them to supply farm machiney to provide plenty of fieldwork for their populations and the country would have enough machinery to be used on farmlands ensuring that the Spanish would not starve if anything bad happened to them. According to some Spanish websites, IASA accomplished this within a few months and that helped the firm to enlarge its activity by growing into other fields like manufacturing army surplus lorries and military vehicles, armoured vehicles and later roadgoing cranes most of these featured 4X4 and 6X6 offroad models when IASA current business was largely expanding starting in the late 1960s. As IASA never built or produced any vehicles before, in 1966 the firm turned to BARREIROS, EBRO, NAZAR & PEGASO the main local lorry and tractor largest manufacturers and each of these 4 independent makes supplied IASA with their own offroad vehicles and models for IASA who built prototype go-anywhere for several purposes such as agricultural trucks, fire engines and industrial lorries to begin and some weeks later after several updates and redesigns offroad vehicle production started and the most popular models that existed were all based & built on the famous PEGASO 3055 Diesel 6X6 lorry, itself is a ENASA Armytruck 6WD model of the 1970s even though IASA still used little technology with limited resources, but were able to then develop their very first 6WD crosscountry mobilecrane and it soon became an instant successful model. Many of these brandnew mobilecranes were bought by the Spanish Armed Forces, Fire Departments & Rescue Services and they could be bought with a customers choice of Barreiros Diesel, Ebro Diesel engine or Pegaso TD engine and this particular rugged model, known locally in Spain as the IASA-PEGASO 3055 6X6 that was still avaialble until the mid 1980s, it was quickly joined by other IASA new hydraulic bigger cranetruck models. When the 1980s arrived IASA was now a prolific independent manufacturer of both cranetrucks and mobilecranes, besides making a range of agricultural equipment although only Barreiros Diesel engined combine harvesters were available, because their crane models proved a lot more popular than other IASA machinery and LUNA acquired 56% share of IASA ownership who then provided more technology and modern hydraulics for IASA in return. Earlier in 1967 it was decided to open a second factory at Pamplona where all combine harvester production would be transfered there, to make way for IASA to develop and still be able to build new modern cranetrucks. This whole new production era started in the 1970s and IASA were manufacturing their own modern hydraulic cranes of all types some still based on the previous yet very successful IASA-PEGASO 3055 6X6 model and the company launched other new large mobilecranes but only using new Barreiros trucks and Pegaso cranecarriers of many types also using their running gear as powerplants for their IASA more modern & updated crane models and kept manufacturing them with excelent sales until about 1990 when the first IASA 4X4 and 6X6 original cranetruck model range appeared most of these were based on older LUNA models that IASA agreed to make, as the LUNA company were more interested in manufacturing much larger and higher capacity lifting fully hydraulic cranetrucks all of their own original design. Unfortunately when the 1990s arrived, so did a world economical and financial recession that spread across every corner of Europe and like so many other European mechanical engineering companies of similar type, big or small found themselves into serious problems that brought IASA slowsales and some financial problems so they were forced to merge into the LUNA crane making operation, who were one of the few names that were doing well as their own machinery were clearly inspired by Coles Cranes Limited cranetruck technology and modern hydraulics. So then LUNA bought the smaller IASA firm by 1991 and were their parent company for the next 10 years. During that time LUNA concentrated on large to huge fully hydraulic cranetrucks, while IASA just focused on small to medium capacity mobilecranes, but by 1996 sales of IASA cranes were slowly dropped after low sales and the name IASA vanished, although LUNA did keep some of their own lighter models still under production, the former IASA factories are currently the main LUNA crane manufacturing premises.